"When you ring the bell...you have to wait longer"

The healthcare company Attendo will pay fines of nearly $400,000 for understaffing at two of its elderly care facilities in Norrköping.

"When you ring the bell and want them to come in, you have to wait a little longer, " Ingegerd Norén, 88, who lives in one of the facilities, told Swedish Radio.

Several of the residents' family members complained about understaffing. "We determined that Attendo was running operations at both of the facilities with fewer employees than we had agreed upon," says Gunilla Lundberg, who is responsible for elderly care in Norrköping, a city north of Stockholm.

Attendo says the company and the municipality used a different formula to count staff. But the company still decided to pay the fine.

"It's signals that we could have counted staff members in a different way," says Charlotte Näsström Morén, an Attendo press spokesperson.

Norrköping municipality had decided to take over the management of the elderly facilities before the breach of contract.